A line-o'-verse or two

“The light wanes in the west.
The road is long, but I shall not tire;
I will lay my bones, God send,
By the beautiful City of Heart’s Desire,
In the Land of Rainbow’s-End.”

“Then it’s ho, for a pack!” sang the Pilgrim gray,
“And a stout oak staff for friend,
And it’s over the hills and far away
To the Land of Rainbow’s-End.”

A BALLADE OF A BORE

When the weather is warm and the glass running high
And the odors of Araby tincture the air;
When the sun is aloft in a white and blue sky,
And the morrow holds promise of falling as fair; —
In spring or in summer I’m free to declare,
And the same I am equally free to maintain,
One person has power my peace to impair:
The man who tells limericks gives me a pain.

When the foliage flushes and summer is by,
And russet and red are the popular wear;
When the song of the woodland is changed to a sigh
And the horn of the hunter is heard by the hare; —
In the season of autumn I’m free to declare,
And my language is lucid and simple and plain,
One person’s acquaintance I freely forswear:
The man with the limerick gives me a pain.

When the landscape is iced and the snow feathers fly,
When the fields are all bald and the trees are all bare,
And the prospect which nature presents to the eye
Is chiefly distinguished by glitter and glare; —
In the season of winter I’m free to declare
That the limerick person is flat and inane.
This person, I think, we could easily spare:
The man who tells limericks gives me a pain.

L’Envoi

From New Year to Christmas I’m free to declare
That, for ways that are dull and for verse that is vain,
One bore is peculiar – and not at all rare:
The man with the limerick gives me a pain.

THE POLE

(Tune: “Carcassonne.”)

I’m an old man, I’m eighty-three,
I seldom get away;
My work, it keeps me close at home —
I have no time for play.
If it were not for the journey back,
That so fatigues a soul,
I’d like to take a little trip —
I never have seen the Pole.

’Tis said that in that favored place
There is no heat or drouth;
And that, whichever way you turn,
You’re looking south-by-south.
Some say there is a flagstaff there,
Some say there is a hole.
Think of the years that I have lived
And never have seen the Pole!

The parson a hundred times is right —
We ought to stay at home.
I’m an old man, I’m eighty-three,
I have no call to roam.
And yet if I could somehow find
The time – God bless my soul! —
I think that I would die content
If I only could see the Pole!

My brother has seen Baraboo,
If so he speak the truth;
My wife and son they both have been
As far as to Duluth;
My cousin cruised to Eastport, Maine,
On a ship that carried coal;
I’ve been as far as Mackinac —
But I never have seen the Pole!

SH-H-H-H!

“Mr. Mabie is now reading the summer books.”

    – The Ladies’ Home Journal.

What shall we buy for a summer’s day?
What is good reading and what is not?
Mabie will tell us – we wait his say;
For Mabie alone can know what’s what.
Meanwhile the world is as still as death;
Mute inquiry is in men’s looks;
Everybody is holding his breath —